


Just One Try

by FrostyRadar



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 01:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12288630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyRadar/pseuds/FrostyRadar
Summary: Steven attempts to convince two of his friends to form an unlikely companionship.





	Just One Try

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fanfic that I attempted to make not garbage. Enjoy.

"Ugh, do we really gotta do this Steven?"  
Amethyst had asked this same question for yet the third time as she and Steven exited the warp stream, the two gracefully floating down onto the warp pad just below in a shimmer of blue light. They stepped down from the crystalline platform onto the great green grassy plain before them, and Steven for yet the third time acknowledged Amethyst's impertinent question with a patient smile.  
"Of course," he said, "we haven't seen Lapis and Peridot in weeks, they'll be happy to see us!"  
Amethyst rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Yeah, I bet she'll be real happy to see me," she said with a hint of distaste. Amethyst crossed her arms and did her best to look dour and uninterested, kicking an innocent pebble away for good measure.  
Steven pouted and grabbed a reluctant Amethyst's arm, practically dragging her immovable frame towards a barn in the distance.  
"Cmoooon," Steven whined, "I knooow you'll get along if you try!" He grunted as he slowly pulled as hard as he could on Amethyst's arm, whose owner refused to budge an inch. Amethyst's face suddenly shifted into a sly grin, and she shapeshifted her arm into a slimy, goopy mass. Steven immediately released his grasp on the now slippery and disgusting appendage.  
"Aw gross," Steven shouted, frantically wiping his hands with his shirt and squinting disapprovingly at Amethyst. "Really?"  
"Yup, really," Amethyst said with a insincerely cheery tone and a smirk. She turned right around with a fancy little twirl and made for the warp pad at the pace of a light stroll. Steven was at his wit's end by this point, it had been an ordeal all day for him to just convince Amethyst to come along at all.  
"Please Amethyst," Steven said as patiently as he could bear, "just give it one chance, just a small one; you'll never know unless you try!" Steven cupped his hands together and got down on his knees, literally begging Amethyst to heed his pleas. "Pleeeeaaaaaase?"  
Amethyst stopped her slow march to the warp and reluctantly turned around, gazing on the pathetic sight before her with pity.  
"Really Steven," she said bluntly.  
"Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase," Steven begged with big puppy dog eyes.  
Amethyst let out an exasperated sigh. "Steven, you know she really, really doesn't like me, right? Like, kinda for good reason too, even if she did all that crazy stuff like steal the ocean?"  
"She just hasn't gotten to know you yet."  
Amethyst gave Steven a weary look. "And you know I'm not good at hanging out with mopey sadsacks like her, right?"  
"You'll like her if you give her a chance."  
Amethyst closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, attempting to keep her composure as she tried to reason with the hopelessly optimistic boy. "Steven..."  
"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase?"  
Finally Amethyst's breaking point had been reached, and she gritted her teeth and relented to Steven's near-screeching cries. Anything to sedate him for a few moments and get him off her back. "Alright alright I'll give her a chance!"  
Steven gasped and looked up at her, his previously despairing face instantly replaced with bright, hopeful eyes. "Really?!"  
Amethyst plodded over to Steven and lifted him to his feet by the scruff of his shirt. She planted Steven down on the ground, placed her hands on her hips resolutely, and made sure he was looking her straight in the eyes.  
"Really. But if she does her usual thing where she just acts moody or distant or gives me the cold-shoulder or whatever then I'm walking," Amethyst said firmly, and she gestured to the warp pad to emphasize her point.  
Amethyst's barest of concessions was just enough to tide Steven over, and with a great big smile he grabbed a consenting Amethyst by the hand and led her back down the path to the barn.  
"Great to hear," Steven beamed, "and don't worry about a thing, I'll convince Lapis to open up no problem!"  
Amethyst trudged along behind the exuberant boy, still not fully convinced despite his wholehearted assurances and her own rather weak resolve to cooperate.  
"Steven," Amethyst said hesitantly, "even if she does like you a lot, how can you be so sure-"  
Steven turned his head back and gave Amethyst a peeved look. "Amethyst, you already said you'll try."  
"Fine, fine," huffed Amethyst, and she picked up the pace to match Steven's own excited jog. "One try."  
The two quickly closed in on the large mishmash of a barn in the distance. It was still covered in all manner of trinkets and structures and old junk, each piece representing some aspect of one or both of it's two residents. To Steven it looked like the beautiful culmination of all that Lapis and Peridot had learned from their time on Earth mixed with their own quirky alien ideas of what home decorating meant. To Amethyst it looked like a garbage dump. Steven spotted Peridot on her usual perch outside, the bed of a truck that had been smashed through the front of the barn. No Lapis in sight however, she was must have been busy doing something inside.  
Peridot as usual was completely engrossed in the same corny TV she had been obsessed with for months, and as a result did not take notice of Steven and Amethyst's rather noisy approach. The two stopped right beneath the truck bed, and decided to get her attention in the quickest way possible.  
"HEY PERIDOT," the two screamed at the top of their lungs in unison. Peridot screeched and jumped in fright, falling out from the side of the truck and landing face first onto the hard dirt below. Steven and Amethyst silently stared wide-eyed at Peridot's crumpled form on the ground, before she twitched a bit and jumped right up to her feet, grinning her typical goofy smile as if she had not just fallen from a height that would've crippled a human.  
"Steven, Amethyst," Peridot greeted cheerfully, looking from one to the other, "so great to see you! It's been too long since your last visit!"  
Amethyst grinned for the first time in the last hour and trotted over to Peridot, giving her a slap on the back that almost sent her faceplanting again. "Yeah, sorry 'bout that Peri! You know how it is, always having to go save the world and junk."  
"Of course," said Peridot thoughtfully, readjusting her footing, "I know you Crystal Gems are oh so busy gathering up those corrupted gems and such." Peridot then turned towards Amethyst and beamed. "But it's so nice of you to take time out to befriend a lonely gem like Lapis!"  
Amethyst's face immediately fell and affixed itself back into her pouty mug from before. "Ugh, not you too Peridot." She shot Steven a heated look. "You got Peridot in on this too Steven?"  
Peridot's face was stricken with confusion by Amethyst's unexpected response. "What, did I say something incorrect? Steven informed me that you would be coming here to uh, 'bury the hatchet' with Lapis, however morbid that sounds." Peridot looked from a sullen-looking Amethyst to an increasingly worried Steven for answers.  
"Bet she'll want to bury a hatchet somewhere," Amethyst muttered. Steven took the events unfolding before him as his cue to spring into action to intervene and depress Amethyst's increasingly heated demeanor. He quickly stepped between Peridot and Amethyst, forced the most cheerful yet uneasy grin he could, and gripped Amethyst's hand with clammy palms.  
"Heheh," Steven laughed meekly, "s-so..." Steven looked at Peridot with desperation in his eyes, as if begging her not to screw this up after he had gotten Amethyst this far. "Where would Lapis be, Peridot?" Peridot made no hint of catching this and continued on speaking in her typical cheery tone.  
"Oh, Lapis is sleeping right now," Peridot said, gesturing towards the inside of the barn, and she rolled her eyes. "I TOLD her to prepare for your arrival, but when I mentioned it she acted like she didn't even hear me, and cozied right up into her hammock." Peridot then let out a soft chuckle and shook her head. "Sheesh, it's almost like she doesn't want to meet you Amethyst!"  
"Haha okay thank you Peridot," Steven quickly spat out while shuffling an even more dour-looking Amethyst into the barn, who was growing increasingly skeptical and disinterested by the second. They entered through the barn door and quickly spotted Lapis in the corner, indeed sound asleep in her hammock. It seemed she was sleeping quite heavily; the air reverberated with thick, long snores, and the rather loud debacle that occurred right outside seeming to have caused no cessation or disruption of Lapis almost peaceful sleep.  
"Yeesh, girl's got the snores of a chainsaw," Amethyst said with a slight chuckle.  
"Heh yeah," said Steven, "maybe don't mention that though, she gets embarrassed about it."  
"Sounds cute, I think I'll tease her about it," said Amethyst.  
"Hah w-well," Steven said nervously, "a-at least you're considering talking to her now..."  
Just Steven approached quietly with light footsteps, Amethyst preferring to stay a bit ways away, just in case her sudden appearance would shock Lapis too much upon her awakening. Steven tiptoed to right next to Lapis's hammock, whose occupant was currently sleeping on her stomach and donning a blue and white striped sleep mask, and made no indication that Steven had disturbed her yet. Steven felt bad for having to break such a deep slumber, but if he didn't wake Lapis now Amethyst would potentially use that opportunity to slip away, and then Lapis and Amethyst would never become friends! Such an outcome was unacceptable in Steven's mind, and so he gently prodded Lapis to rouse her awake.  
"Lapis," Steven whispered ever so softly, "Wake up, I've got a friend here for you to meet." Steven began softly poking Lapis's cheek while continuing to whisper for her to awaken, and soon enough the desired result was achieved when Lapis's snores ceased, and she began shifting ever so slightly as her now awakened mind tried to regain it's bearings.  
"Nn..." Lapis breathed, clearly not yet fully awake, her mind teetering on the edge of dreams and reality. Steven ceased his gentle tapping and moved in closer so that his voice could cut through Lapis's hazy thoughts.  
"Lapis, it's me, Steven," he whispered a bit more loudly to where Lapis's ear would be.  
"Stevennn..." Lapis drawled out.  
"Yup, it's your buddy, Steven," Steven said a bit giddily. He was just seconds away from two of his buddies finally, and he could barely contain his excitement. "Come on, wake up, I've got a friend that I want you to meet."  
"F-Friend," Lapis asked lazily. She yawned long and low as Amethyst tapped her foot impatiently, wishing for the whole process to move along at a faster pace. If it were up to Amethyst she would've just flipped the hammock over to let the floor wake Lapis up. Lapis moved a sleep-heavy, sluggish hand up to her sleep mask and slowly pushed it right above her eyes. Bleary-eyed and not yet used to the bright sunlight that beamed through the dusty old barn, Lapis rubbed her eyes a bit as she tried her best to focus. She didn't even bother to pick her head up as she craned her neck around to scan the inside of the barn, searching for this so-called friend of Steven's. Lapis's still clouded-over eyes landed on an amorphous purple blob by the barn door, one she didn't recall as a piece in the barn's art gallery. She squinted to try and make out who the blob was, and after a minute or two she was able to determine that the blob was none other than Amethyst, Steven's friend and one of the Crystal Gems. Ah, Amethyst.  
It took Lapis a few seconds to fully register the identity of the figure before her. When she did, her mind instantly shot awake, any remnants of sleep forcibly evaporating out of reach. Lapis stared stony-faced at Amethyst, her eyes blank and deathlike. She moved not one muscle, allowing the suffocating silence to linger past it's welcome as Lapis and Amethyst participated in an unwilling standoff. Slowly, Lapis pulled her sleep mask back down onto her eyes. Steven and Amethyst stood there in thick, awkward silence as Lapis got cozy in her hammock, shifting into a more comfortable position. Once again rapturous snores filled the barn. It was almost as if the two had never even disturbed her.  
Steven stood above her simply dumbfounded, unsure of how to proceed next. All he could do was utter a simple "uh" as his mind raced through potential solutions to remedy the situation. Amethyst however had already thought up her own solution.  
"Welp it was worth a try," Amethyst said nonchalantly with a lazy shrug, and she turned on her heels and exited the barn.  
"Aw geez, don't go yet Amethyst," Steven called, running after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WEW! WHAT A RUSH! What heartpounding excitement! Next chapter we will focus on Lapis and how she feels about stuff.


End file.
